Is it hard work to be "born again"?

Is it hard work to be "born again"? We know that we need to be changed from the inside out. Years of being what we are have made us set in our ways, we feel. Our problems are a part of us, through and through, whether it's lust, appetite, jealousy, or whatever vice has a hold on us. How can we become really different than what we just are?

We can change the color of our hair but how can we change the color of our eyes? If we were born to be short how can we become tall? For a selfish person to become unselfish seems as impossible. And most poignantly, for a lustful, sexually impure person (a rapist? an abuser?) to become pure in heart seems totally impossible--so say our courts of law.

And now here comes Jesus telling us that "except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God" (John 3:3). To many people it sounds like a death-knell. "I am what I am, and there's no way I can be different! If only blue-eyed people can enter heaven, I'm sunk for I have brown eyes!"

Sit down and read the whole of John 3. Nicodemus asked precisely the same questions. You'll be surprised how much better is Jesus' Good News of the new birth than what we have thought it is:

(1) Because of what Jesus accomplished on His cross, the Holy Spirit has become everyone's new "parents." When He impregnated the Virgin Mary to bring Jesus to birth, He impregnated everyone with a divine seed of a new life to be formed within. The new birth is not you "born-ing" yourself anew (excuse me; we need a new verb); "the wind bloweth where it listeth," says Jesus; "so is everyone that is born of the [Holy] Spirit." He is constantly casting seeds into human hearts, for Christ is the "Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world" (1:9). The "seed" is the Light of Good News in Christ.

(2) Now, don't practice abortion on the new life that the Holy Spirit is constantly begetting within you. Stop resisting Him. If you choose darkness, you set yourself up for judgment.